


This Side of Paradise

by anextraordinarymuse (December_Daughter)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 19:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6437686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/December_Daughter/pseuds/anextraordinarymuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tag to 3x09 and some speculation for what might happen after.</p>
<p>"Abby folds the memory of Marcus’s kiss against her heart to fortify herself. She builds on that memory, pulls others in – Clarke’s laugh, and the way Jake had looked at her when she told him she was pregnant, and Raven’s smile, and Wells Jaha, and Lincoln; Abby builds herself a wall of memories, and faces Thelonious with defiant pride.<br/>It’s almost enough."</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Side of Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> I can't stop thinking about that stunning moment between Marcus and Abby in the interrogation room, and wondering about what will happen if Abby is forced to take that chip, and who will take it out of her, and how exactly she'll be reunited with Marcus - so I sat down and wrote out one possibility.  
> Is it Thursday yet?

Abby is suddenly, awfully aware of the truth the moment she hears about what’s happened; the moment she learns that Marcus Kane has been sentenced to death. For treason, even.

Life is a fight, Abby thinks, and fate is a bitch.

Abby is aware of the truth, but it’s not until the moment she watches Marcus shuffle into the interrogation room with his hands and feet bound that she _knows_. There’s a difference between being aware of something, and knowing – understanding what that something is.

Now, as Marcus moves toward her, Abby understands.

“Are you all right?”

Abby can only manage a tiny nod. The man with an impending expiration date on his life is asking her if she’s okay.

Oh, no … no, no, no. She can’t be here again; she can’t be asked to bear this again, because if she is … if she is, she’ll break.

“I won’t let this happen to you.”

Jake was out of her reach. Her hands had been tied on the Ark – there had been no way to save Jake, and she’d known it. Even if Abby had found some way to help her husband escape, where would he have gone? There had been nowhere for him to go, and no way for Abby to save him once Thelonious decided to arrest him rather than talk him down.

That’s not the case now, though. Now, they’re on the ground and there’s an entire world out there that can hide Marcus; now, Abby can do something about it. She can, and she will.

Marcus tries to talk her out of it. “Abby, listen. Anyone caught helping us will be condemned to death, too.”

Abby can see in his expression that he can’t bear the thought of her sharing his fate, but even his sorrow can’t penetrate the fog of desperation that clutches at her heart.

“Then I won’t get caught.”

“Look, I’m begging you … I’m begging you, just don’t, don’t do it. Our people need someone here to show them a way out of the dark.”

_No_. Her whole heart, her whole being ignites with the force of her refusal. No, she will not do this again. Once before she was made to sacrifice the life of the man she loved for the good of her people, and she won’t do it again. She _can’t_ do it again, and it’s a truth that’s so powerful, so primitive that it pours out of her in broken syllables.

“I can’t do this again.”

Abby can’t lead anyone without Marcus. He’s better at it anyway, and without him around to guide her … without him around to set the example, their people are doomed. Abby is a doctor, not a politician; she’s too outspoken and brash to be a good ambassador for her people. She’s stubborn and impulsive and bossy, if Clarke is to be believed, and any hope for peace with the grounders and this new life on Earth lies with Marcus.

Abby can’t do this without Marcus. She can’t give their people hope if she has none left for herself, and if Marcus dies – if he dies Abby might never have hope again.

She’s almost afraid to touch him. Her hands flutter and then come to cradle his face, and the feel of his skin beneath her fingers fractures her. Abby wants to break down, and for several heartbeats she does. She brings their foreheads together and touches his hair; she doesn’t blame him for pulling away when she reaches for him. His words are an explanation, but Abby doesn’t need them. She understands because she can see it in his face: if she kisses him now, it’ll destroy them both.

“Please, don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

Abby stands immobile as she watches them lead Marcus away. She can hardly breathe, and her very atoms cry out against the idea of losing him. They have work to do, and people to save, and treaties to broker; she can’t lose him like this.

She won’t.

* * *

 

 

The whole world goes to shit with startling speed. Lincoln’s death hits them hard; not just Abby, but Jasper, and Monty, and Bellamy, and everyone who is or was once friends with him. Abby’s heart goes out to Octavia and she fervently hopes that Marcus can find a way to help her through the grief.

Thelonious and his AI program ratchet up to the top of the threat list, and Abby can’t think of anything except how to stop them and help Raven at the same time. Pike still needs to be dealt with, and there’s a dark pit full of grief for Lincoln in her heart, but Jaha is Abby’s immediate concern. Whatever he’s doing, she has to find a way to reverse it.

Life on the ground is a mad dash through pain and perils; there’s barely time to process one horror before the next is upon them.

Abby is in medical one minute, and then slouched in a chair with her hands secured behind her back the next. Her anger is almost enough to distract her from the knowledge that Jackson has betrayed her. Jackson, whom she has known and worked with for years; the man she counted a friend has been taken in by whatever the hell Thelonious is peddling, and turned her over to the same fate.

Still, Abby can and does resist. Jaha might believe the drivel he spouts off to her, but Abby knows better. She won’t give in even if they threaten to torture her; whatever happens now, there is hope. Marcus is outside the walls of Arkadia and far from the threat of Pike, and so is Clarke. That’s all Abby needs to keep going.

She’ll resist, and bear it all, and find a way to get them all out of here in one piece. She’ll do it for Lincoln, who gave himself fearlessly so that his people his might live; for Clarke, who darkens her soul and loses herself to save her friends; and for Marcus, who bears the hope of a peaceful future in his heart and on his arm.

Abby folds the memory of Marcus’s kiss against her heart to fortify herself. She builds on that memory, pulls others in – Clarke’s laugh, and the way Jake had looked at her when she told him she was pregnant, and Raven’s smile, and Wells Jaha, and Lincoln; Abby builds herself a wall of memories, and faces Thelonious with defiant pride.

It’s almost enough.

* * *

 

 

Abby hasn’t slept in days. Every time her feet strike the ground a sharp lance of pain shoots up her spine and sweeps out into the rest of her body. She is coming apart, shattering and unraveling in shifts, and soon she will be no more than debris beneath the feet of those she tried so hard to fight.

  
None of that matters, though, because it feels so far away. Abby is exhausted; she can’t think past the next step, and the next breath. She knows that she needs to find a way out for everyone, but she can’t; her mind is a war zone. The onslaught is overpowering. She clings to her memories because she’s afraid to forget. That damn AI that calls herself ALIE takes advantage of this and turns Abby’s memories against her: instead of kisses and laughter and tenderness, Abby is left with the screams of those tortured inside Mt. Weather – her own leg aches and burns where the drill went in – and the sight of Jake being floated, and a hysterical Clarke trying to wipe Finn’s blood from her hands … and Marcus, defeated and diminished, shuffling off to die as a martyr. Every death, every sin, every failure is Abby’s to relive again and again.

“There is no pain in the City of Light,” Thelonious has told her a thousand times.

But Abby resists, and her punishment is a lifetime of pain crammed into every breath she draws.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Abby.” ALIE’s voice makes Abby grit her teeth. She’s calm, and reassuring, and Abby hates her. “I can make the pain stop, if you let me.”

“No.”

“Why do you resist, Abby?”

The shudder starts in Abby’s once injured leg and spreads until she’s shaking so hard she has to stop walking. ALIE stands quietly next to her, the red of her dress a stark contrast to the cold gray walls of the Ark. No, of Arkadia – they are on the ground now, and this place might be made from the bones of the Ark, but it isn’t the same.

Abby closes her eyes, but ALIE is there, too. There is no peace to be found.

Her mind is a battleground, but her heart is not. Her heart is the only place ALIE can’t reach; her heart is the only reason Abby has lasted this long. How long has it been, Abby wonders?

“Ten days,” ALIE supplies helpfully.

Abby ignores her. ALIE’s reach is considerable, but it doesn’t extend to Abby’s heart so that’s where she retreats to. Abby has heard the phrase “torn apart from the inside” before, but she appreciates it now in a way she didn’t before. She can’t sustain this pull of opposites for much longer.

Abby stands in the middle of the hallway, immobile and shaking, and forces her thoughts into line. There is hope outside the fence; Jasper had tried to help her; Raven is fighting ALIE as well. For just a second she thinks it might have worked, and then it falls apart. She has no way of knowing if Marcus is even alive, and the loss of Lincoln might have finally broken Octavia (and oh, how deeply Abby will understand if it has), and she hasn’t seen Jasper in days, and Raven is as much a prisoner of her own mind as Abby is.  
The worst is the pain, though. She can’t think because of it, can’t function under the strain of it, and it doesn’t stop. The pain goes on forever and Abby has to let it, because the alternative is unacceptable. It’s everywhere: it’s internal, and external, and in her dreams; ALIE is either going to beat her into submission, or kill her with the effort.  
“Why submit yourself to this, Abby?” ALIE asks again. There’s a note of desperation to the artificial voice that Abby misses.

Abby’s body is passed the limit of what it can take. Her legs buckle and she falls gracelessly to her knees. The impact is another burst of pain that makes Abby’s breath hitch.

“Why submit yourself to this pain?”

“Because it’s mine,” Abby grinds out.

The pain is hers just like the people are hers; some of them are gone, and some of it is her fault, but she refuses to give that up.

Abby’s never actually seen someone die of exhaustion – she might be the first to do so in the forty some odd years she’s been alive. What an odd way to go, she thinks. It’s certainly not an end she ever envisioned for herself, especially here on the ground.

“Abby!”

She’s fallen forward onto her hands, but she raises her head at the sound of someone calling her name. A vague, dark shape moves toward her, and then there’s a face in front of her. Abby’s vision is too blurry to make out the details: it seems to be a man with dark hair, and her first thought is maybe that it’s Bellamy, but he’s been gone for days.

“Abby?”

She knows who she wants it to be; she knows who that voice should belong to, if there’s any goodness left in the world. Her heart strains against her rib cage and toward the man that could be, that should be Marcus.

Suddenly, there are hands on her face. Abby blinks and a stray memory flits through her mind: the scratch of a salt and pepper beard against the skin of her hands, and shaggy hair, and soft lips.

“Take it out,” Abby says on an exhale. “Stop her.”

Then she closes her eyes, and the world falls away.

* * *

 

 Something is dripping. The steady pattering is the first thing Abby is aware of: _drip, drip, drip_. What would make such a sound? Did she leave the water on?

_Drip, drip, drip._

There’s something about the sound that goes straight to Abby’s heart. She needs to know what the sound is, and where it’s coming from. She inhales deeply and the air brings a rush of smells with it: earth, and freshness, and something else. When she opens her eyes she finds herself staring straight up at a dark, unfamiliar ceiling. Not just any ceiling – it’s not the gray metal of space, but the rich brown of the earth.

All at once, Abby turns her head. Her hair rasps against something beneath her – blankets, maybe, or some kind of cloth – and her eyes take in the sight of a cave. She’s not in Arkadia at all; there’s a small collection of figures scattered across the ground in senseless patterns. Each figure is a person, and as Abby stares the figures start to transform themselves into people Abby knows. Harper is here, and Monty, and several others; they’re asleep. Abby shifts her head up slightly and chokes on air: Indra and Octavia are here, too.

Abby’s breath begins to burn in her lungs. Her heart expands too much, too quickly, and she fears it’ll burst. The sight of Indra and Octavia shocks the last vestiges of unconsciousness from her. She’s aware of every injury and ache, from the gnawing hunger in her stomach to an entirely new and intense pain at the back of her neck. That’s not important, though, because something is still dripping, and if Indra and Octavia are here then Marcus has to be as well. He _has_ to be.

Abby tries to sit up and her body rebels. _I can’t_ , it seems to say, and Abby ignores it; she rolls to the side instead and pushes herself to her feet on the force of her will alone. Her head pounds and her vision swims, but Abby has a clear goal in mind: find Marcus. She doesn’t have the energy for anything more than single-mindedness, so she has no idea that the sudden echoing of her motions through the cave has drawn attention to her. Abby doesn’t realize that Indra and Octavia are awake, and that at the first sign of her movement Octavia has risen to her feet; she doesn’t realize that Indra stops Octavia from rushing to her side with a hand on her arm, or that her grunts of pain have woken a few others.

The entrance to the cave isn’t far, and the light that filters in draws Abby’s gaze. It’s not the bright glare of daylight, but the subdued gray of something else: rain. It’s raining, and the dripping that had woken Abby is the steady plunge of raindrops off the rim of the cave. She forces herself forward and her quads burn, but walking doesn’t bring her pain anymore. She’ll think of that later.

Abby drives toward the gray light. There’s something important about the rain, something that she needs. She reaches the mouth of the cave and keeps going until she can feel the cool raindrops against her skin.

“She shouldn’t be out there,” Octavia tells Indra.

The rain is steady but not out of control. Abby’s hair gets heavier the more water it takes on, but she doesn’t care. Someone is approaching.

Marcus; it’s Marcus, his floppy hair plastered to his forehead and an automatic rifle held against his chest. Abby both laughs and sobs, and the sound is choked but it carries anyway. Marcus’s eyes find her immediately.

“Abby.”

He runs for her. Abby collapses into him the moment he’s near and nearly drags them both down into the dirt. She clutches at the material of his jacket where it covers his back and presses her face into his chest, and replenishes her strength with his presence.

“Mom?”

This time Abby only sobs, because when she lifts her eyes to the space near Marcus’s shoulder she finds Clarke there.

“Clarke.”

She keeps one arm around Marcus’s waist and extends the other toward her daughter, who steps forward and lets herself be drawn in. She clings to Marcus and Clarke until the quiet rumble of his voice settles in her ears.

“You’re soaked,” Marcus says. “We have to get out of the rain.”

Clarke extracts herself and motions for Marcus to hand her his weapon. He passes it over and Clarke moves into the cave as Marcus bands an arm around Abby’s waist to help her inside.

“Marcus.” Abby’s throat is dry and her voice is hoarse from disuse, but there are shadows in Marcus’s eyes that worry her. “What happened?”

He seems hesitant to answer her, so Abby exerts what little energy she has to stop their forward progress. Marcus stops at the first sign of resistance from her; they’re a handful of steps inside the cave, and he looks so tired when he turns to face her.

“Our people are divided,” he informs her quietly. “Pike, and Farm Station, and those loyal to them are still in Arkadia. Jaha is there, too.”

“And the others?”

“Sinclair led a group to the drop ship. We’re on our way to meet them. We’ll have to figure out what to do from there.”

Abby is afraid to ask her next question, but she has to know. “How many of us made it out?”

“Most. We got Lincoln’s people out of lock up; Sinclair took them with him. Raven is here, with us.”

That reassures Abby a little, at least. She doesn’t think about this new division of their people, or consider the possibility that now their own people might be as much of a threat to them as the grounders were, and might be again. They’ll figure something out, all of them, together.

There’s still darkness in Marcus’s eyes, though, a haunted sort of veil that drives Abby’s next words.

“You were really there, in that hallway.”

Marcus’s nod is nearly imperceptible. “When I got there, you were on the ground.”

“How long have I been out?”

Marcus takes a rattling breath. Abby has found the root of the darkness – she knows by the way his shoulders droop forward ever so slightly. She reaches for his face again, an echo of that moment in the interrogation room when she’d thought he was going to his death. His beard is scratchy against her hands, just as Abby remembers.

“Marcus.”

“Three days.” Marcus finally looks at her. “Clarke took that chip out of your neck and you didn’t even move. I thought you were dead, Abby.”

Abby is tired, and her whole body hurts, but she strokes Marcus’s cheeks with her thumbs and presses tender kisses against his lips. It heals her as much as it heals him.

“I’m here,” she reassures him.

Marcus’s hands come to rest on her hips. They’re warm through the material of her shirt, and Abby shivers as she realizes for the first time that she’s cold. The onslaught of everything she’s been through in the last two weeks has left her weak, and going out into the rain was probably a bad idea, but she’s thankful for even the smallest sensation.  
Her thoughts are her own again; there’s no longer a fight between her heart and her mind, and that’s a start. Marcus is here, and Clarke, and Abby’s heart is full of hope once more.

Marcus kisses her again and then leads her back to the pile of material that had served as her bed. He helps her sit down and then moves away to procure her a cup of water and a small meal – some kind of cooked root and a strip of salted meat that Abby thinks must have come from Indra. Marcus moves around for another minute or so and then sits down next to her.

Abby sets to eating slowly, starting with the root; Indra, Octavia, and Clarke come to sit in a loose half circle in front of her.

“Now that you’re awake, we have to move,” Indra says.

Octavia doesn’t speak, but she nods in agreement.

“I’ll wake everyone and get them ready,” Clarke offers. “We can’t afford to spend another night here. We weren’t followed, but we left a trail.”

“I sent Miller to the drop ship with a message for Sinclair,” Marcus tells them. “So he knows we made it out.”

Abby listens without comment and eats without tasting. Jaha had promised that the City of Light was paradise, free from pain and anger and suffering. He’d tried to promise her everything he’d thought she’d want.

Abby takes in the sight of those around her. They’re facing yet another impossible situation; despite all they’ve done, and lost, and how hard they’ve tried, they’re damn near all the way back at square one.

Despite the setbacks, they are together, and that fact alone gives Abby strength – and hope.

Life is a mad dash through pain and perils, but Abby will face it, because it’s not all sorrow and loss. It’s love, and friendship, and beauty – and it’s worth living.

No, Abby doesn’t want some illusion of perfection. She wants to stay here, on this side of paradise with the people she loves, for as long as she can.


End file.
